Kingdom of Clouds
by Lady Berenice
Summary: The 'filler' story between Kalasin's Betrothal and Queen Kalasin.


The Kingdom of Clouds 

Prologue – King and Queen

Sarain, very early spring, Imperial Year 2817 

"Oww!"

King Yevgen of Sarain blinked hard and tried to pull back, but his jaw was held in a grip as strong as iron.

"If you would just look to the side like I've told you time and time again, it wouldn't hurt," Callum was soundly unsympathetic as he re-dipped the dampened brush into the light brown powder. "Now hold still." The valet leaned in again, his grimly determined expression more suited to one preparing for battle rather than putting his employer's mascara on.

The uncomfortable daily ritual, even though they had been doing it almost every day for months, was, depressingly enough, not even in the list of top ten unpleasant things the King had to do every day, but it was among the first, which more than made up for it.

Ever since they had realized that the new King's colouring, unusual even back home eastwards over the mountains, was making his subjects uneasy, there had been numerous concerted attempts to make subtle adjustments, while not looking as though any such steps had been made.

The eyelashes were the biggest problem.

One would not normally think so, but both the K'mir and the Saren lowlanders put a great deal of stock in eye contact and face-to-face negotiation, and Yevgen's natural pale blond lashes, combined with his dark brown eyes, caused a great deal of discomfiture across the negotiating table in this land where the opposite was seemingly universal.

They had tried the obvious solution of dye first, of course, but after a very nasty allergic reaction that had necessitated a rather humiliating staged loss on the practice courts so that Yevgen could convincingly sport swollen eyes for the next week or so, that sensible solution had been abandoned.

Now it seemed that the only practical, viable, non-allergic solution was to have Callum paint a fine line of kohl around his employer's lashline, dust the lashes with coloured powder, and then sealing the mess with a very expensive beeswax-based concoction so that it would not run during the day-to-day existence of a ruling King of a rather backward kingdom.

Getting it _off_ every night was almost as much fun.

"You know what the worst part is?" Yevgen complained when Callum finally let him get up.

"It's that after all this every morning, the whole point is that people don't notice," the valet intoned. This, too, was part of the daily ritual. It seemed that only within this dressing room, and only to the valet, that Yevgen was able to be somewhat of the man that he was –twenty years old, all but exiled from his home, living among strangers and surrounded by covetous neigbours who cast acquisitive eyes towards his newly-granted domains and watched eagerly for any misstep.

Then, there was the wife.

Oh, not that Callum _disliked_ Kalasin. On the contrary, she was a lovely girl, and not just in an aesthetic sense. She was sensible and had more than a scrap of intelligence, and kind towards the staff, a quality that Callum had learned not to take for granted here in the barbarous borders of the world.

But the fact remained, that she was Yevgen's wife, and an added complication. It had been an arrangement for the stability of the incorporation of Sarain into the Empire, because Kalasin was the granddaughter of the last acknowledged King of Sarain. After nearly six months of marriage, they were still on cordial terms, and were always impeccably polite towards each other.

Somehow that simply seemed wrong to Callum. He had not a great deal of experience in such matters – after all, three quarters of the reason that he had put his name forward, and then been chosen to come out west with Yevgen was that they were approximately the same age and that Callum had no family or close ties on the other side of the mountains – but somehow managing to be married to someone for almost six months and developing no particularly strong feelings for them one way or another grated a little against his natural instincts.

He would have understood if they detested each other – after all, both were political pawns traded off with barely a word of consultation. He didn't know about Kalasin, but Yevgen's long-standing girlfriend had been unceremoniously dismissed by his mother, the Empress, and bribed with a prestigious military post, which had to have smarted, particularly since said girlfriend had taken the bribe and not contacted her former lover since.

He would have understood if they had fallen head-over-heels for each other. Both Yevgen and Kalasin were very attractive people, in terms of beauty, brains and personality. If one was going to find oneself bound to a stranger, either of them (depending on your gender preference) was going to be near the top of the list.

But nothing like this. Not this polite courtesy. The closest analogy that Callum could think of was that of an old married couple, who had long since fallen out of lust with each other, and perhaps even out of love, but still retained affection and friendship. It was a little jarring that they had skipped over the entire lust-and-love thing.

Some muffled cursing at the other end of the room indicated that Yevgen was having trouble deciding which out of his seeming hundreds of tunics he was going to wear.

With a sigh, Callum went back to his valeting and picked up the outfit he had chosen the night before. Yevgen had never used to be like this, he had been told innumerable times by the King's friends. Before, he'd been like any other knight, fussy enough before parties and grand occasions, but easy-going in relation to his everyday appearance. But it seemed that having a valet was a bit like having an increase in income – just as your expenses seemed to creep up to match it, your requirement for somebody to colour-coordinate your tunics and iron your shirts seemed to increase when you had someone to do it.

When Kalasin opened her eyes she was alone in bed. Not that it was terribly surprising, really. Yevgen was a quiet sleeper, and an even quieter waker, if that made any sense. He was usually up, immaculately dressed and reviewing the day's plans over coffee and toast before Kalasin was even mildly coherent.

This morning was no exception. She could hear the quiet _chink_ of good-quality china, the rustle of parchment and remarkably civilized chewing through the slightly open door that lead to the outer rooms of their apartments, interspliced with low murmuring about how someone or another was a complete nutcase and could they please be calmed down with a low-ranking official before their royal audience?

A soft _ahem_ at her elbow brought her attention to her lady's maid, who was holding out Kalasin's robe with averted eyes. Mariella was Tortallan-born of Saren exiles, and it sometimes seemed to Kalasin that the younger woman combined the most tiresome aspects of both cultures. Even after six months in service to the Queen of Sarain, Mariella still seemed to be radiating disapproval at the fact that Kalasin and her husband chose to share a room and a bed most nights, and that they didn't bother with nightclothes. There were moments when Kalasin wondered if part of the reason her unusually perceptive and considerate husband did get up so much earlier than she was so he could spare Mariella's gasps and blushes when she saw him making the dash from bed to dressing-room in the pre-dawn dimness (Callum, Yevgen's valet, did not come into the royal bedroom to wake the King – Callum waited for his employer in Yevgen's dressing room at the pre-appointed time).

With a sigh of regret, Kalasin eased her way out of the comfortable nest of goosedown quilts and lambswool blankets, and wrapped herself in the cloudlike cashmere robe that was exactly two shades darker than a midsummer sky. Mariella glided gracefully towards Kalasin's dressing room, the Queen following the maid with considerably less grace.

Kalasin of Conté, Queen of Sarain, was not a morning person. Unfortunately, the problem with being Queen of Sarain was that the morning was frequently the best part of the day.


End file.
